Physiologic Development of Speech Production

在目前的赠款期间，对3个月至4岁儿童的主要言语系统(即呼吸系统、发音系统和发音系统)的典型言语发育的生理框架进行了量化。这项拟议的继续研究将这些系统特有的发现整合到典型发育儿童的系统中，并将这些研究扩展到发育性言语障碍。在语音生理学、音韵学、语音和语言发展方面发展成熟的描述技术，以及复杂系统的计算建模，为研究语音发展和语音损伤提供了统一的方法。基于神经网络的计算模型将用于跨语音系统和跨观察级别(即，生理观察和语音输出)关联事件，并将生理事件的变换映射到语音输出(即，语音和韵律)。300名36-48个月大的儿童，其中240名将表现出来源不明的言语延迟，将通过详细的语音描述、生理描述(包括呼吸、发音和发音信号)进行研究。连接主义模型将识别协同变化的生理参数、语音产生参数的集群，以及这两个域上集群的链接。这些分析将产生言语障碍的生理学相关图，并将为评估当前原因不明的儿童言语延迟提供基础。

During the current grant period the physiologic framework underlying typical speech development has been quantified for the major speech systems (i.e., respiratory, phonatory, and articulatory systems) in children from 3-months to 4-years of age. This proposed continuation integrates these system-specific findings across systems in typically developing children and extends these studies to developmental speech impairment. Well-developed descriptive techniques in speech physiology, phonology, speech and language development, and computational modeling of complex systems provide convergent methods for studying speech development and speech impairment. Neural network-based computational modeling will be used to relate events across speech systems and across levels of observation (i.e., physiologic observations and speech output) and to map the transform of physiologic events to speech output (i.e., phonetic and prosodic). Three hundred 36-48-month-old children, 240 of whom will exhibit speech delay of unknown origin, will be studied using detailed phonetic description, physiologic description (including respiratory, phonatory, and articulatory signals). Connectionist models will identify clustering of covarying physiologic parameters, speech production parameters, and linkages of clusters across these two domains. These analyses will yield a map of the physiologic correlates of speech impairment, and will provide a basis for evaluating current nosologies of child speech delay of unknown origin.